Monday, November 26, 2012

Need for achievement is not just an expression but an area of study in Psychology. This desire known as N-Ach can be tested in personality tests such as an AVA and TAT. For Managers, Business Owners and Senior execs, being able to determine N-Ach and Grit should be taken into consideration when recruiting and promoting people talent.

Need for
achievement (N-Ach) refers to an individual's desire for significant
accomplishment, mastering of skills, control, or high standards. The term was
first used by Henry
Murray[1] and associated with
a range of actions. These include: "intense, prolonged and repeated efforts to
accomplish something difficult. To work with singleness of purpose towards a
high and distant goal. To have the determination to win". The concept of NAch
was subsequently popularised by the psychologist David McClelland.[citation
needed]
Need for Achievement is related to the difficulty of tasks people choose to
undertake. Those with low N-Ach may choose very easy tasks, in order to minimize risk of failure, or highly difficult tasks, such that a failure would not be
embarrassing. Those with high N-Ach tend to choose moderately difficult tasks,
feeling that they are challenging, but within reach.
People high in N-Ach are characterised by a tendency to seek challenges and a
high degree of independence. Their most satisfying reward is the recognition of
their achievements. Sources of high N-Ach include:

Association of achievement with one's own competence and effort, not luck

A desire to be effective or challenged

Intrapersonal Strength

Theory

The pioneering research
work of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in the 1930s, summarised in
Explorations in Personality, provided the start point for future studies
of personality, especially those relating to needs and motives. David C. McClelland's
and his associates' investigations of achievement motivation have particular
relevance to the emergence of leadership. McClelland was interested in the
possibility of deliberately arousing a motive to achieve in an attempt to
explain how individuals express their preferences for particular outcomes — a
general problem of motivation. In this connection, the need for achievement
refers to an individual's preference for success under conditions of
competition. The vehicle McClelland employed to establish the presence
of an achievement motive was the type of fantasy a person expressed on the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT),
developed by Christiana Morgan and Henry Murray, who note in Explorations in
Personality that "...when a person interprets an ambiguous social situation
he is apt to expose his own personality as much as the phenomenon to which he is
attending... Each picture should suggest some critical situation and be
effective in evoking a fantasy relating to it" (p531). The test is composed of a
series of pictures that subjects are asked to interpret and describe to the
psychologist. The TAT has been widely used to support assessment of needs and
motives.[2]

The procedure in
McClelland's initial investigation was to arouse in the test audience a concern
with their achievement. A control group was used in which arousal was omitted.
In the course of this experiment, McClelland discovered through analyzing the
stories on the TAT that initial arousal was not necessary. Instead, members of
the control group — individuals who had had no prior arousal — demonstrated
significant differences in their stories, some writing stories with a high
achievement content and some submitting stories with a low achievement content.
Using results based on the Thematic Apperception Test,
McClelland demonstrated that individuals in a society can be grouped into high
achievers and low achievers based on their scores on what he called "N-Ach".[2]

McClelland and his
associates have since extended their work in fantasy analysis to include
different age groups, occupational groups, and nationalities in their
investigations of the strength of need for achievement. These investigations
have indicated that the N-Ach score increases with a rise in occupational level.
Invariably, businessmen, managers, and entrepreneurs are high scorers. Other
investigations into the characteristics of the high achievers have revealed that
accomplishment on the job represents an end in itself; monetary rewards serve as
an index of this accomplishment. In addition, these other studies found that the
high achievers, though identified as managers, businessmen, and entrepreneurs,
are not gamblers. They will accept risk only to the degree they believe their
personal contributions will make a difference in the final outcome.[3]

These explorations into
the achievement motive seem to turn naturally into the investigation of national
differences based on Max Weber's thesis that the industrialization and economic
development of the Western nations were related to the Protestant ethic and its
corresponding values supporting work and achievement. McClelland and his
associates have satisfied themselves that such a relationship, viewed
historically through an index of national power consumption, indeed exists.
Differences related to individual, as well as to national, accomplishments
depend on the presence or absence of an achievement motive in addition to
economic resources or the infusion of financial assistance. High achievers can
be viewed as satisfying a need for self-actualization through accomplishments in
their job assignments as a result of their particular knowledge, their
particular experiences, and the particular environments in which they have
lived.[4]

Measurement

The techniques
McClelland and his collaborators developed to measure N-Ach, N-Affil and N-Pow (see McClelland et
al., 1958) can be viewed as a radical break with the dominant psychometric
tradition. However, it should be recognised that McClellend's thinking was
strongly influenced by the pioneering work of Henry Murray, both in terms of Murray's model of
human needs and motivational processes (1938) and his work with the OSS during
World War Two. It was during this period that Murray introduced the idea of
"situation tests" and multi-rater / multi-method assessments. It was Murray who
first identified the significance of Need for Achievement, Power and Affiliation
and placed these in the context of an integrated motivational model.

Whilst trait-based
personality theory assume that high-level competencies like initiative,
creativity, and leadership can be assessed using “internally consistent”
measures (see psychometrics), the McClelland measures recognize
that such competencies are difficult and demanding activities which will neither
be developed nor displayed unless people are undertaking activities they care
about (i.e. are strongly motivated to undertake). Furthermore, it is the
cumulative number of independent, but cumulative and substitutable, components
of competence they bring to bear while seeking to carry out these activities
that will determine their success. Accordingly, the N-Ach, N-Aff and N-Pow
scoring systems simply count how many components of competence people bring to
bear whilst carrying out activities they have a strong personal inclination (or
motivation) to undertake.

An important corollary
is that there is no point in trying to assess people’s abilities without first
finding out what they care about. So one cannot (as some psychometricians try to
do) assess such things as “creativity” in any general sense. One has always to
ask “creativity in relation to what?” So McClelland’s measures, originally
presented as means of assessing “personality”, are best understood as means of
measuring competence in ways which break
radically with traditional psychometric approaches. (See Raven (2001) for a
fuller discussion).

Monday, November 19, 2012

Monday, November 12, 2012

Thinking of some of successful people, one of the greatest attributes they hold is grit. It's an odd term and not main stream in most talk paths, more studies have come out on how grit contributes to over achievement.

I pulled this off Wikipedia as a reference and it has some interesting definitions, links and empirical data.

If you DISC or personality test your candidates, perhaps a "Grit" test would be a better gauge of future success, especially in sales.

Grit in psychology is a positive,
non-cognitive trait, based
on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled
with a powerful motivation to
achieve their respective objective. This perseverance of effort promotes the
overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie within a gritty individual’s path
to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization.
Commonly associated concepts within the field of psychology include
"perseverance," "hardiness," "resilience,” “ambition,” “need for
achievement” and conscientiousness. These constructs can be
conceptualized as individual differences related to the
accomplishment of work rather than latent ability.This distinction was brought
into focus in 1907 when William James challenged the field to further
investigate how certain individuals are capable of accessing richer trait
reservoirs enabling them to accomplish more than the average person,[1] but the construct
dates back at least to Galton, and the ideals of persistence and tenacity have
been understood as a virtue at least since Aristotle. Although the last decade has seen a
noticeable increase in research focused on achievement-oriented traits, there
continues to be difficulty in aligning specific traits and outcomes.

Definition of Grit

Grit is defined as
“perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” [2]
Building upon biographical collections of famous leaders in history, researchers
and scientists have reached similar conclusions about high achieving
individuals. Specifically, those individuals who were deemed more successful and
influential than their contemporary counterparts typically possessed traits
above and beyond that of normal ability.[3][4][5] While ability was
still critically important, these individuals also possessed “zeal” and
“persistence of motive and effort.”[2]
Duckworth and colleagues (2007) believe this dual-component of Grit to be a
crucial differentiator from similar constructs. Grit is conceptualized as a
stable trait that does not require immediate positive feedback.[2]
Individuals high in Grit are able to maintain their determination and motivation
over long periods of time despite experiences with failure and adversity. Their
passion and commitment towards the long-term objective is the overriding factor
that provides the stamina required to “stay the course” amid challenges and
set-backs. Essentially, the Grittier person is focused on winning the marathon, not the sprint.

Literature
Comparisons

Grit and Positive
Psychology

Grit also ties in with positive
psychology and in particular, with perseverance. As mentioned earlier, the
ability to stick with and pursue a goal over a long period of time is an
important aspect of Grit. This area of positive psychology has been interested
in the process of perseverance as a positive indicator of long term success.[6] Grit’s inclusion of
the perseverance construct is perhaps unsurprising as Angela Duckworth was a
doctoral candidate under Martin Seligman.

Grit and
Intelligence

One of the best
predictors of future achievement has been intelligence.[7] This relationship
has been found in scholastic achievement as well as in job performance.[8] As such, one might
expect that grit would be strongly correlated with intelligence. In fact, this
prompted one of the early questions asked in Grit research, “Why do some
individuals accomplish more than others of equal intelligence?”.[2]
Somewhat surprisingly, in four separate samples, Grit was found to be either orthogonal to or
slightly inversely correlated with intelligence.[9] This means that
Grit, unlike many traditional measures of performance is not tied to
intelligence. As the researchers have suggested, this helps explain why some
very intelligent individuals do not consistently perform well over long periods
of time.

The Grit measure has been
compared to the Big Five personality model, which
are a group of broad personality dimensions consisting of openness to
experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.[10] In one study by
Duckworth and Quinn, the Short Grit Scale (Grit–S) and 12-item self-report
measure of Grit (Grit–O) measuring Grit was strongly correlated with
conscientiousness (r = .77, p <.001 and r = .73, p <.001) (2009). While
Grit is related to conscientiousness measures, it also differs from
conscientiousness in important ways. For example, while both Grit and
conscientiousness are often associated with short term accomplishments, Grit is
also associated with longer term and multi-year goals.[2] This
long-term persistence and dependability are important aspects that make Grit
distinct from conscientiousness. Another personality characteristic that is
often linked to Grit is the need for achievement. One way in which Grit differs
from the need for achievement is that individuals with high scores in Grit often
set extremely long-term goals for themselves and pursue them deliberately even
without positive feedback,[2] while
need for achievement lacks this long-term component.

Comparison with related psychological constructs

Traditional constructs in
this area include perseverance, hardiness, resilience, ambition, and need for
achievement. Grit has been argued to be distinguishable from each of these
in the following ways. Perseverance is the
steadfast pursuit of a task, mission, or journey in spite of obstacles,
discouragement, or distraction. In contrast, Grit is argued to be trait to
perseverance. Grit enables an individual to persevere in accomplishing a goal
despite obstacles over an extended period of time.[2] When
compared with the construct of persistence, Grit adds a component of passion for
the goal.[11] This goal passion
also contributes to the ability of the individual to sustain effort over the
long term.

Maddi (2006) defines
hardiness as a combination of attitudes that provide the courage and motivation
to do the hard, strategic work of turning stressful circumstances from potential
disasters into growth opportunities.[12] While Grit
is primarily a measure of an individual’s ability to persist in obtaining a
specific goal over an extended time period (Duckworth et al., 2007), hardiness
refers to an individual’s ability to persist through difficult circumstances and
does not address the individual’s long term persistence toward a specific
goal.[2] Maddi
(2006) developed a theoretical model of hardiness as a tool for developing
resilience.[12]

Resilience is a dynamic
process in which an individual overcomes significant adversity, usually in the
form of a life changing event or difficult personal circumstances. Resilience
can be conceptualized as an adaptive response to a challenging situation.[13] Grit involves
maintaining goal focused effort for extended periods of time, often while facing
adversity but does not require a critical incident. Importantly, Grit is
conceptualized as a trait while resilience is a dynamic process. Finally,
resilience has been almost exclusively studied in children (cf. Luther,
Doernberger, & Zigler, 1993) who are born into “at-risk” situations.[13] Although
resilience researchers recognize that adults likely demonstrate resilience in a
similar manner to children, the resilience process has not been studied in a
mature population.[14]

Ambition is broadly defined as
the desire for attainment, power, or superiority. In contrast to ambitious
individuals, Gritty individuals do not seek fame or external recognition for
their achievements. Ambition is often associated with a desire for fame.[15] Unlike ambitious
individuals, gritty individuals do not seek to distinguish themselves from other
people, but to obtain personal goals.

McClelland (1961)
describes need
for achievement as a drive to complete manageable goals that enable the
individual to receive immediate feedback.[16] In contrast to
need for achievement, Gritty individuals consciously set long-term goals that
are difficult to attain and do not waver from these difficult goals, regardless
of the presence of feedback. Additionally, need for achievement has been studied
for almost 50 years and has been found to positively correlate to self-efficacy and learning goal
orientation.[17][18] These links have
not yet been tested in the Grit literature.

Scientific Findings

The primary scientific
findings on Grit come from Duckworth and colleagues’ examination of Grit as an
individual difference trait capable of predicting long-term success.[2] It was
proposed that individuals who possess a drive to tirelessly work through
challenges, failures, and adversity to achieve set
goals and are uniquely positioned to reach higher achievements than others who
lack similar stamina. In a series of six studies Duckworth et al. proposed,
developed, and tested a two-factor Grit scale with notable results. In addition
to validating their Grit scale, the authors also found support suggesting that
Grit provided incremental predictive validity for education and age above and
beyond the Big 5 personality traits (Study 2); that higher levels of Grit were
more highly associated with cumulative grade point average (GPA) in an Ivy league sample when compared
to those with lower Grit levels (r = .25, p < .01; Study 3); that Grit
predicted retention after their first summer in two
classes of cadets at the United States Military Academy
(Study 4); and that participants in a National
Spelling Bee with higher Grit scores typically work harder and longer than
less Gritty peers, ultimately resulting in better performance. This series of
studies provides empirical evidence that an individual
difference conceptualized as Grit can account for significant variance in performance across a variety of settings.
Grit predicts beyond the typical and unrelated cognitive construct of IQ and can account for variance
over and above what is observed in the Big 5 personality construct of
conscientiousness.

In 2009, Duckworth and Quinn found additional support for the Grit construct
when they developed and validated a more condensed version of the Grit Scale
(Grit-S) by removing four of the previous items and improving its psychometric
properties. Using samples from the data collected in their 2007 studies, the
authors were able to achieve complementary results that suggested the positive
relationships between Grit and educational attainment, GPA, retention in
college, and success in a national spelling bee competition.

Future Directions

Questions may surface
relating to what additional cognitive and non-cognitive traits play complementary
roles in the development of Grit. Of additional interest may be how the
distinctive environmental conditions, specifically the interrelationships of
emotional and cognitive
load, might moderate and assist in explaining why some individuals succumb
to significant challenges or struggle with obstacles that block their path to
goal achievement, while others are able to overcome these barriers. The United States military believes that
this and similar constructs may assist in explaining why some soldiers are better
equipped to handle the psychological trauma of combat.[19] Other on-going
work includes investigations of the combined or multiplicative impacts of both
cognitive and Grit-like predictors of achievement in leaderadaptability situations.[20]

About Me

As a Management Consultant working with Start Up's and Small/Medium size businesses, this forum is to share experiences from the front lines on sales, marketing, people talent, interviewing, sales management and other business related topics.
www.IndigoOceans.com